mental health

Kelly McGonigal, PhD, Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Yoga Therapy, shares research trends on how yoga and meditation support mental health and recovery from anxiety, depression, addiction, chronic pain, and trauma. Presented at the 2011 International Symposium on Yoga Therapy and Research in Asilomar, CA. (30 min)

The following resources are intended to help those new to yoga research find and explore existing research; get small, low-cost projects off the ground; and find opportunities to communicate research to key audiences, including potential funders, professional organizations, and the general public. Prepared by Kelly McGonigal for the Yoga Service Council/2012 Yoga Service Conference.

If you have ideas for other resources that should be added to this list, please include the information in a comment on this page!

Slides from talk

General Resources

Finding Research

Create an account with PubMed, then conduct a search for a key term (e.g. “yoga” or “mindfulness meditation”). Click “save search,” which will then allow you to set preferences for receiving email updates for new research. Create as many alerts as you want this way, or use Advanced Search.

Search for research in progress at clinicaltrials.gov to find out who is running funded studies now.

Research Raven is a database of conferences and calls for presentations/papers by a wide range of groups related to trauma, at-risk populations, mental health, social work, medicine, psychotherapy, etc. Find conferences to attend and submit your work to.

The Yoga Service Council plans to put out a call for both presentations at the 2013 conference at the Omega Institute and articles for their forthcoming online journal.

Conducting Research

Informed Consent

The following websites provide examples of informed consent forms you can adapt to your own research project.

Self-Report Measures/Surveys

The following websites provide the items and scoring instructions for validated measures of outcomes relevant to yoga and mindfulness/meditation research. Before administering scales, especially to at-risk populations or children, be sure you understand the ethics and have obtained informed consent and relevant permissions.

Yoga Program Evaluation Surveys developed by Yoga Activist (survey participants, volunteers, and partners’ satisfaction and feedback; use as is or use as sample)

If you are looking for validated scales on other topics, there are two main strategies. One is to do a Google search for “________ scale” and see what comes up. The second is to obtain published studies that have looked at the outcome you are interested in and see what measures they use.

Remember you can also ask the groups/administrators you are working with what outcomes they are already measuring that you might get access to.

Tools for Research Design and Analysis

Absolutely fantastic collection of articles, advice, and online tutorials about how to conduct research/surveys to evaluate programs/interventions, from planning your evaluation to reporting your results, and even what it takes to claim a program is “evidence-based.” Compiled by Wilder Research, in partnership with the Minnesota Department of Human Services.

Online Statistics Tool. This website contains calculators to conduct a wide range of analyses (e.g. descriptive statistics, t-tests, correlations) without understanding the math behind them! However, you still need to understand what analyses to run and how to enter the data. Many universities’ statistics departments offer free stats consulting to non-profit organizations; check your local university.